Briefing: Sloan Survey

Wednesday afternoon's press conference, "Celestial Soundings with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey," featured the latest results on baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). Michael Wood-Vasey (University of Pittsburgh) explained how BAO can be used to chart the expansion of the universe over time , and David Schlegel (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) showed an example using the Lyman-alpha forest to determine the expansion rate 10 billion years ago. Daniel Eisenstein (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) showed how BAO can be used to measure cosmic distances, and Shirley Ho (Carnegie Mellon University) presented a 1% distance measurement to massive galaxies at redshifts exceeding 0.5. AAS Press Officer Rick Fienberg moderated the briefing.